Ar Rehla: Journal of Islamic Tourism, Halal Food, Islamic Traveling, and Creative Economy provides these guidelines to assist reviewers in conducting objective, thorough, and constructive manuscript evaluations. Reviewers are expected to assess scholarly quality, identify strengths and weaknesses, and provide recommendations that help authors improve their manuscripts.
Before accepting a review invitation, reviewers should:
Assess Expertise: Ensure that the manuscript is relevant to their academic expertise and research experience.
Confirm Availability: Ensure that they can complete the review within the specified deadline, generally one month.
Identify Conflicts of Interest: Disclose any circumstances that may compromise their independence or impartiality.
Respond Promptly: Accept or decline the invitation through the journal's Open Journal Systems (OJS) platform.
Reviewers who are unable to complete an accepted assignment should promptly inform the handling editor. When appropriate, they may suggest alternative reviewers with relevant expertise.
Reviewers should evaluate manuscripts according to the following academic criteria:
Relevance and Originality: Does the manuscript align with the journal's scope and offer an original scholarly contribution?
Research Problem and Objectives: Are the research problem, objectives, and questions clearly defined and academically significant?
Literature and Theoretical Foundation: Does the manuscript critically engage with relevant previous studies and establish an appropriate theoretical or conceptual foundation?
Methodological Quality: Are the research design, data sources, collection procedures, and analytical methods appropriate, clearly explained, and scientifically sound?
Findings and Discussion: Are the findings supported by adequate evidence, critically analysed, and appropriately discussed in relation to existing scholarship?
Conclusions and Contributions: Do the conclusions address the research objectives and demonstrate meaningful theoretical, empirical, or practical contributions?
Academic Presentation: Is the manuscript clearly organised, logically written, and supported by accurate citations, relevant references, and appropriate tables or figures?
For Research-Based Review Articles, reviewers should additionally assess the clarity of the literature review approach, the adequacy of source selection, the depth of critical synthesis, and the originality of the resulting insights or theoretical arguments.
Manuscripts must be assessed according to their research objectives and scholarly contributions, whether they address Islamic or conventional tourism and other subjects within the journal's Focus and Scope.
Review reports should provide clear, specific, and academically justified feedback. Reviewers are encouraged to organise their comments into:
Overall Assessment: A brief evaluation of the manuscript's relevance, originality, principal contributions, and overall academic quality.
Major Comments: Substantive concerns involving research objectives, theoretical foundations, methodology, analysis, interpretation, or scholarly contributions.
Minor Comments: Specific improvements concerning clarity, terminology, organisation, citations, tables, figures, and presentation.
Reviewers should identify the relevant sections or passages when recommending revisions and explain why changes are necessary. Comments should be constructive, respectful, evidence-based, and sufficiently detailed to guide authors.
Reviewers are not expected to rewrite manuscripts or provide extensive language editing. However, they should identify significant writing problems that affect academic clarity.
Concerns regarding suspected plagiarism, unreliable data, or other serious irregularities should be communicated confidentially to the handling editor.
Reviewers must maintain the confidentiality of manuscripts, research materials, and editorial correspondence. Unpublished information must not be disclosed, distributed, or used for personal or professional advantage.
Reviewers must provide impartial evaluations, avoid personal criticism, and maintain the anonymity required by the journal's double-blind review system.
Further responsibilities regarding professional conduct and competing interests are explained in the Publication Ethics and Conflict of Interest Policy.
Reviewers must submit their evaluations through the Ar Rehla OJS platform using the assigned review form.
The review submission should include:
An overall assessment of the manuscript.
Constructive comments and recommendations for authors.
Confidential comments to the editor, where necessary.
A clear editorial recommendation supported by the review findings.
Reviewer recommendations may include acceptance, minor revision, major revision, further review after revision, or rejection, depending on the manuscript's academic quality and the available recommendation options.
Where necessary, reviewers may upload an annotated manuscript containing specific comments, provided that personal identifying information has been removed.
Reviewers may be invited to reassess revised manuscripts to determine whether their previous concerns have been adequately addressed.
Reviewer recommendations serve as academic advice to the editorial team. Final publication decisions remain the responsibility of the Editor-in-Chief, as explained in the Peer Review Process.
